Today, wind turbines are complex and expensive power plants. In order to operate a wind turbine in a cost-effective manner, it is important that down time periods are as short as possible. However, this requirement can not be easily fulfilled, since the wind turbine has to be protected from damages, resulting, for example, from heavy loads caused by high wind speeds, or from failures of the wind turbine itself. In order to protect a wind turbine in heavy wind conditions it is generally known to shutdown the wind turbine in the case that wind speed exceeds a certain limit.
Moreover, from U.S. Pat. No. 7,476,985 B2 it is known to operate a wind turbine in a safe mode in the case that the wind speed exceeds a certain limit. In the safe mode the output power of the wind turbine is reduced.
From EP 2 026 160 A1 it is known to decide about the shutdown of a wind turbine, based on an event which is present, such as icing, structural integrity of parts of the wind turbine, etc.
Moreover, from EP 1 531 376 B1 a predictive maintenance system is known, which generates alarms related to failures or malfunctioning of mechanical components of a wind turbine, based on a vibration analysis.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method of operating a wind turbine and a wind turbine providing an improved availability of the wind turbine.